Skeleton Knight in Another World

Episode 9

The first half of this week's show is all action. Arc, Ariane, Chiyome, and Goemon basically just curbstomp a ton of nameless soldiers and free a bunch of captured slaves before turning the slave market to rubble. Sure, there is a bit of character-building going on in Chiyome and Arc's reaction to finding the pile of slave corpses and Chiyome and Ariane playfully showing off their skills to one another but, more than anything else, it's just a mini-action climax for the end of the arc.

The second half of the episode is where things get interesting. We are finally given the last piece of the puzzle needed to understand the political intrigue that has been going on in the background over these past few episodes. Basically, without even knowing it, our heroes have found themselves blundering through an international conspiracy. And as this information seems vital as we move into the series' final arc, let's spend some time breaking down all we know.

Basically, there are two neighboring nations, the Rhoden Kingdom and the Holy Revlon Empire. The Holy Revlon Empire hopes to destabilize its neighbor to gain control. To attain this goal there are plans within plans at work. The biggest of these is to expand the Kingdom's slave trade—ruining the Kingdom's relationship with both the beastmen and the elves in the process. To this end, The Holy Revlon Empire has cozied up to the Kingdom's second prince, Dakares—letting him have the illicit profits while using his royal power as a shield to keep the corruption expanding. At the same time, The Holy Revlon Empire used its newfound technology to control monsters to send sent a pair of basilisks to disrupt the Kingdom's trade routes as a distraction.

Arc and his companions have unwittingly foiled both of these plans. First Arc killed one of the Basalisks—allowing the Kingdom's soldiers to defeat the other without major losses. Then, as a consequence of their “over enthusiastic” slave rescue mission, Arc and Ariane ended up exposing the existence of the slave trade to the royal family. This caused Dakares' power to decrease dramatically and threw him into damage control mode. On top of this, his sister, Princess Yuriarna, was sent to treat with the elves in the hope of restoring peaceful relations. To stop this, The Holy Revlon Empire (at Dakares's urging) sent a pack of mind-controlled wolf monsters to assassinate her. However, they ran into Arc and Ariane and were freed from imperial control before completing their mission.

Yet, even as all this happened, the Kingdom itself was in the midst of a succession crisis—and the eldest prince, Sekt, was more than happy to take advantage of the Holy Revlon Empire-caused chaos to make a play for the throne. Not only did Sekt allow Dakares to try and assassinate their sister, he also used it as a chance to isolate the younger prince by assassinating her himself—tricking Dakares into thinking he had failed and had no choice but to go into hiding. Then all that was needed was to assassinate Dakares—before publicly announcing his crimes. But while Sekt succeeded in killing both Dakares and Yuriarna, he also failed in Yuriarna's case. But who could have expected someone like Arc to arrive and resurrect the fallen princess and many of her soldiers?

So now we're left with three-person power struggle for control of the Rhoden Kingdom between the emperor of the Holy Revlon Empire, Prince Sekt, and Princess Yuriarna. The emperor is preparing a monster-filled invasion force to attack the weakened kingdom. Meanwhile, Sekt is leisurely consolidating his power now that he believes himself to be the only one in line for the throne. Lastly, Yuriarna is determined to complete her mission and make peace with the elves so that when she returns to the capitol, she will be able to smash her brother's claim on the throne by not only returning from the dead but securing the Kingdom's food supply as well.

All in all, it's some solid political drama. It's complex without being overly so and everyone's motives make obvious sense. But what's really great about it is how Arc and Ariana have absolutely no idea about what's actually going on—or how their actions have shaped the current crisis. Even now, they are the wildcard in the situation. Their interference—or lack thereof—could mean the difference between a successful imperial invasion or a failed one. We'll just have to see how it all turns out in the final arc of the season.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• The subtitles translate “Ponta-dono” as “Lady Ponta.” I forget, was it ever established before that Ponta is female? I wonder if Arc knows?

• The fighting animation in this episode is both smooth and detailed. I'm sad that most of the episode is at night and done in such muted colors.

• Arc just really wanted a bro-hug from Goemon, didn't he?

*Update 6/4: This article originally stated that Dakares, not Sekt, was behind the assassins that killed Yuriarna. This has been corrected.

Skeleton Knight in Another World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.